Cherry Mobile W900 Review

Cherry Mobile recently introduced yet another affordable Android smartphone they called the Dragon Phone. After more than a week’s time with it, we’re pretty sure what Cherry Mobile is gunning for with this new handset. Check out our full review of the Cherry Mobile W900 after the break.

The W900 comes in a
slightly bigger box than the Magnum 2X. As with the latter, the box is
also enclosed inside an outer carton box filled with some of the details
about the phone.

The handset comes in with the usual accessories. There’s a USB cable,
charger and a headset. The review unit given to us comes with a screen
protector inside the box. We’re not sure if it’s going to be the same
for retail units or it will be attached out of the box.

As we’ve mentioned on our first impression, the phone comes in two
color variety, Black with Gold lining and White with Silver lining. The
“Curvaceous” W900’s design looks like BlackBerry phones, especially the
all touch version Storm. The top and the bottom part are tapered with a
flat back panel. Unlike its dual-core counterpart, the W900’s innards
are enclosed in an all glossy plastic frame that makes it prone to
fingerprints. We suggest having a clean cloth handy when using the
Dragon Phone particularly for those who have sweaty palms.

The front of the phone sports the 4” capacitive LCD screen along with
the front facing VGA camera, earpiece and sensor. Unlike most
Gingerbread phones that has 4 keys; the W900 only has three soft keys
located directly below the screen. This may be an indication that Cherry Mobile has plans of an ICS upgrade for this device in the future.

The tapered top and bottom part of the Dragon phone are plain. No
buttons, no ports and no holes. All that can be found on each sides of
the device.

On its right side, the small power button that also doubles as
sleep/wake button can be found along with the MicroUSB port which is
covered with a removable plastic flap. The peculiar Eco-mode switch can
also be found just below the power button if you’re holding the phone
upright.

The left side of the phone sports the volume rocker which can also
wake the phone and the 3.5mm audio port which is also covered with a
removable plastic flap. Only time will tell how many removals it can
withstand but so far, after a handful of attempts, the two flaps are
still holding up quite nicely with no visible damage whatsoever.

Besides the 5MP camera, there’s not much going on either on the back
of the W900. Much like the Magnum 2X, the Dragon phone also doesn’t
have a built-in flash. Just in case you’re wondering, the term
“Curvaceous” earlier didn’t come from us. It is actually engraved on the
gold lining at the top-back part of the handset. Complementing the
whole design of the phone, the back panel of the W900 is also made of
plastic with glossy finish. All the more reason to keep a cleaning cloth
handy, unless you want to go for rugged fingerprint filled look.

Underneath the glossy back cover is the 1350mAh battery. The SIM card
slot and the MicroSD card slot can be found at the top of the batter
compartment if the phone is upright. The SIM card can be put in without
removing the battery as well as the MicroSD card. But if you plan to
take out the SIM you’d have to remove the battery first.

The W900 generally looks decent enough for the most part. The all
plastic body of the phone is not all that bad as it made the phone
lightweight and therefore easy on the hands. On the business side of
things, it made the cost of the phone cheaper as the materials used are
inexpensive by nature. Some may find the glossy finish of the handset
attractive and some may not. For me, the shiny appeal doesn’t really
appeal to me that much. The flaps are also a great addition as it adds a
little bit of protection to the phone from dirt and dusts. We think
that with proper caution, those flaps will last for a long period of
time. We also liked the gold accent on the black phone. It added a Mike
Tyson feel to it. But the phone has one too many logos. I think that it
would’ve been better if they dropped the engraved “Curvaceous” at the
back and just went for a single logo.

Having a 4-inch screen, the W900 is the first of its kind on the Cherry Mobile
lineup. But by having the same resolution as the Magnum 2X, the Dragon
Phone’s screen has a slightly lower pixel density than its dual-core
counterpart which is only 233ppi. This slight difference is not that
noticeable though as the screen is still provide a decent viewing
experience under certain conditions. We said this because the screen,
just like the one on the Magnum 2X, doesn’t really deliver a great
outdoor legibility. In comparison to the dual-core handset, the W900 was
actually a bit worse when used outdoors while the sun is at its peak.
But other than that, we think that Cherry Mobile has done a pretty good job on their first 4 incher.

Cherry Mobile
has equipped the W900 with Dolby Digital Plus for sound software. The
result was actually quite impressive for an affordable phone. We were
pleased with the sound output of the Dragon phone through the 3.5mm
port. Even the headset that came with handset was also pretty good.

Although the sound wasn’t eardrum-shattering loud, it’s still loud
enough for a user to zone out and get lost with their favorite tracks.
The loudspeaker is on the downside though, as the sound was too soft but
still audible under some extent. We don’t suggest listening through the
loudspeaker in a crowded area as it can be quite tricky to hear details
of the s ong or understand a conversation in a film. In terms of voice
call, the sound was crisp and audible. We didn’t find ourselves pressing
the phone against our ears just to hear the person on the other line.

The name Dragon phone was actually derived from the handset’s
Snapdragon S2 processor, and for a good reason. This 1GHz system-on-chip
not only provides decent performance but also integrated multiple
functionalities in one chip. By doing so, it has significantly reduced
the manufacturing cost as companies like Cherry Mobile
no longer has to purchase each components from different chip
manufacturers, build the phone part by part and putting it all together.
This in turn makes the price of the phone inexpensive. But Cherry Mobile still has a trick up its sleeves.

In case you’re wondering, the 1GHz mentioned above is not a typo.
Although Qualcomm released a 1.2GHz version of the S2 which is the
MSM8655, the W900 actually has the 45nm MSM8255 Snapdragon S2 processor
which is the same processor used in the recently released HTC One V.
Both are clocked at 1GHz and both can be traced back 2 years ago. The
only difference with the W900 is that it comes overclocked to 1.2GHz out
of the box while the latter was not. This definitely Cherry Mobile’s marketing strategy to reach their consumers. Cherry Mobile
was able to cut down on the manufacturing cost a bit and in turn making
the phone affordable by using a slightly older processor and
overclocking it a bit rather than going for the 1.2GHz S2.

Marketing aside, the device didn’t actually score quite well in the
benchmark tests that we’ve performed. We weren’t expecting this low of a
benchmark score from the device. Not that we’re expecting a high score
from the device. But considering that the W900’s processor was
overclocked to 1.2GHz the HTC One V, which has exactly the same
processor but not overclocked, still garnered better results than the
former. This leaves us to think that the OS may have something to do
about it.

Quadrant only scored the W900 with 1141 while the One V scored 1982.
Things are a bit different on the AnTuTu benchmark as the Dragon phone
triumphs over the chinned-up competitor by a hair with a score of 2673
while the latter scored 2544.

Graphics wise, NenaMark 2 only scored the W900 with 11fps while the HTC One V scored 28.8fps.

Though the handset didn’t really fare well on the benchmarks results,
we were pretty pleased with our experience using the device. There’s
nothing out of the ordinary with its performance but the W900 should
give its users a pretty decent response on most tasks. Simple tasks and
not too resources heavy apps run smoothly without lags. Apps that
require sensors along with touch and swipe gestures are a bit laggy
though. Because of this, it can be quite difficult to score that high
playing Temple Run with this device. Another app that has noticeable
lags is the native movie player app. Although it’s good that the phone
has DIVX support out of the box, the viewing experience was not that
smooth. We hope that a future ICS update, if ever there is one, will fix
this little lags.

The W900 has Gingerbread (2.3.3) out of the box. Considering the
competition this phone is up against, it would’ve been better if it had
come with ICS. We’ve actually asked Cherry Mobile
if they have plans of upgrading the OS in the future but we never
really got a conclusive answer regarding the matter. For now, we just
have to work with what the phone has to offer.

The UI of the W900 doesn’t have the same Gingerbread feel that we were so accustomed to. Cherry Mobile
has decided to go for the unconventional UI for the Dragon phone. We
don’t want to be subjective on this part, so we’ll leave it to you guys
to decide if it suits you. Of course, you can always download
third-party themes (which we did) if you don’t want what you see.

Placing the two Cherry Mobile
flagship devices beside each other, one can already spot the difference
between the UIs. First noticeable difference between the two is the 4
static icons on Favorites tray. It’s present even when inside the app
drawer. The only thing we didn’t like about it was that the icons cannot
be interchanged or replaced with a different one. Scrolling through the
apps, which is display 4×4 because of the Favorites tray, is done
sideways instead of vertically on other Gingerbread phones.

Pulling down the notification bar up top, will give you a Symbian
Belle-like toggle buttons or switches for commonly used phone
functionalities.

Just like in other Gingerbread phones, long pressing on blank portion
of the home screen will give you an option to add Shortcut, Widget and
Folder but you’d have to select one of the options first before seeing
the list of options under that category. The Cherry Mobile’s
custom UI took it a step further by giving us a list of all available
options right from the get go. The options are categorized on each tab
as shown in the screenshot here.

The multitasking UI remains pretty much the same as with other
Gingerbread phones. Users still needs to long press the home key to
reveal active apps. Taking it up a notch, what Cherry Mobile
has done is they’ve integrated the built-in task killer of the handset
to the multitasking screen making it easier to manage running apps.

Plugging a pair of supported headphones or earphones on the audio
port will give users a set of installed apps that users can use with the
accessory. We’ve tried a couple of headsets with the device and the
phone was able to detect and give the same options for each one of it.

Another cool feature of the UI is the gestures. When using the
phone’s default browser, users can assign a gesture to a specific
browser task like “go to homepage”.

Once set, all the users have to do is press the W logo just below the
screen, do the desired gesture and the browser should do the task that
corresponds to the gesture that was done. We were actually pretty amazed
with this feature and how responsive the app is to the gestures that we
made. It would have been even cool if this feature is present on the
phone’s other native apps, nevertheless kudos to Cherry Mobile for integrating this feature in the browser.